What if after his defeat at the battle of Waterloo Napoleon, succeeded in fleeing to the United States as he had planned to do before being intercepted by Allied ships and being sent to St. Helena.
WI: Napoleon escaped to the United States
- Thread starter Iudeus Rex britannicus
- Start date
In the middle of a war they (US) are clearly losing against cGreat Britain?
YEah, this is totally a good idea.
YEah, this is totally a good idea.
Well, some U-Boots surfaced in Singapore to join the IJN after learning that Germany had capitulated to keep on fighting. The question is would Napoleon be high profile about it? If he was certain that Britain wasn't about to reannex the US, he could've laid low somewhere in the south.
The unmentionable sea mammal just got a growth spurt.
Is he actually useful. If he is in the US and not used by Madison in any way, the british might actually ignore him. I mean, he is in permanent exile from Europe. He might try for Quebec or something, maybe, but i find that unlikely as the British would most likely double their troops in the Americas just to add a threat against Napoleon.
I do not see the Americans using him. ANd if they did, i would suspect that they would get stomped by a larger amount of British reinforcements.
How Prussians would do this? Hitler's Operation Sea Mammal had much better changes.
Given the close relationship between Prussia and Britain I would imagine that the UK would provide transport if asked.
The UK would be running down the Navy and would have a large number of easily convertible ships that could take a large number of troops from Prussia to the US.
That said the British had just signed the Treat of Ghent and would have to weigh up really annoying the US and the implications that had for Trans-Atlantic trade.
I suspect that if Nappy was able to wangle his way into a position in the American Government they would support Prussia, but if he appeared to be no treat they would not actively help the Prussians (although might sell some of their older ships)
There was indeed a plan to rescue Napoleon from St Helena by submarine and deliver him to the Americas.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-secret-plot-to-rescue-napoleon-by-submarine-1194764/
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-secret-plot-to-rescue-napoleon-by-submarine-1194764/
I do not think that the Prussians are really going to be concerned about Napoleon....an OCEAN AWAY ON ANOTHER CONTINET
Actually, some conspirators against the Portuguese crown in Northeastern Brazil planned to rescue Nappy from St. Helena; see Conspiracy of Suassuna.
Yes, it's extremely hard to imagine the Coalition permitting Napoleon on the loose ever again. Not after what they had been through.
Were Napoleon to show up on U.S. shores, Mr. Madison's government would find itself in a very awkward position. Madison wasn't any more fond of Napoleon than Jefferson was to begin with. And the U.S. had only barely survived a war with a Britain fully engaged in a European War. Its chances against an undistracted Coalition would be next to nil.
The best Bonaparte could hope for is the Americans allowing him to move on and seek refuge somewhere else (in one of the revolting Spanish colonies, most likely). In that way they would be spared the indignity of having to turn him over to the Royal Navy under threat.
CthulhuFhtagn
Banned
We use him as a negotiating tool to help end the War of 1812. "Give us this extra piece of land and we'll give you Bonaparte."
Again, the war was over by some months before the 100 Days even started. How do people not get this, when everyone knows New Orleans was in early January and that was after the Treaty of Ghent?
Deadtroopers
Banned
Shades of Hannibal after Zama. I imagine the Americans would have got rid of him double quick. The Spanish would love it if they ship him to South America. They would have Coalition assistance in putting down the revolts in their empire. Mind you I would love to see Boney sharing a battlefield with Bolivar. He and other generals of the South American wars of independence are much underrated. Nappy might have found himself way out of his deph. The logistics of campaigning in the Spanish Americas were probably a greater challenge by far than even his Russian and Spanish campaigns and we know what a dog's breakfast he made of them!
Last edited:
How quickly would the U.S. government have discovered him on their soil? This was 200 years ago, long before the FBI and Amber Alerts and all that.
Remember that it took weeks for news of the Treaty of Ghent to make it across the Atlantic, which is why the battle of New Orleans was fought.
If Napoleon makes it to the high seas undetected, he can almost certainly enter the U.S. unmolested. The U.S. government is not going to have any idea he's coming, and the average American will know even less. By the time the government would learn that he's escaped for their shores, he could be far off into the countryside.